#124: Lindsay Barnes - Senior Counsel at Capital One

Jonah Perlin [00:00:00]:

Welcome to How I Lawyer, a podcast where I talk to attorneys from throughout the profession about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it well. I'm your host, Jonah Perlin, a law professor in Washington DC. This episode is sponsored, edited, and engineered by my friends at Lawpods. Lawpods is a professional podcast production company focused solely on attorney podcasting. I absolutely love working with them. And if you're considering becoming a legal podcaster or just wanna learn more, check them out at lawpods.com. And now let's get started. Hello, and welcome back.

Jonah Perlin [00:00:36]:

In today's episode, I'm excited to speak with my friend Lindsey Barnes, who's a senior counsel at Capital One based in Richmond where he advises on consumer financial services. Lindsay started his legal career as a clerk for Pamela j White in Maryland state court followed by a clerkship with judge Ronald Buckwalter, a federal district court judge in Philadelphia. After clerking, Lindsay spent 7 years in private practice at 2 different large law firms. He then went in house at Capital One in September of 2021. In addition to his work at Capital One, Lindsay's committed to supporting junior lawyers and law students at his alma mater and across the country. Before attending law school, Lindsay spent 3 years as a newspaper reporter An editor in Charlottesville, Virginia. And, Lindsay is a graduate of Dartmouth College. Go Big Green.

Jonah Perlin [00:01:17]:

I think I got that right. And the University of Maryland's Carey School of Law. Go Terps. Thanks for joining me, Lindsey. I'm so glad we finally get to do this.

Lindsay Barnes [00:01:25]:

Likewise, Jonah. Thanks so much.

Jonah Perlin [00:01:27]:

Yeah. For sure. So we met during the pandemic when the world was a different place, And you met all of these people online, which I think is fantastic, and it's great that we get to chat. But I don't know that I know your origin story. And so I always like to sorta Start these conversations by hearing about your decision to become a lawyer and join our profession, and whether that was always the plan or sort of where along the plan that became the plan.

Lindsay Barnes [00:01:51]:

It definitely wasn't always the plan. I came out of college. As you said, I was a newspaper reporter, and I had dreams of I'm gonna be a feature writer for The New York Times or Sports Illustrated or any number of Publications I read growing up. And then a couple of things happened. One was that the courts were part of my beat As a reporter, so I got to watch a lot of criminal trials, some civil trials, some criminal arraignments, and I came away from those experiences thinking I could do that. Not necessarily that I wanted to do that, but I looked up and Thought, yeah, people were standing up. They're talking on their feet. They're making an argument.

Lindsay Barnes [00:02:34]:

I could see doing that.

Jonah Perlin [00:02:36]:

Sure.

Lindsay Barnes [00:02:36]:

And The other thing that happened was I did a handful of stories where instead of being able to Prevent the problem or fix the problem. All I could really do was tell people about it. And you have to maintain a level of journalistic objectivity, when you're reporting on things, and I took that very seriously. But there were a few things I did from I remember covering the story of a an immigrant who was wrongfully rounded up for deportation and was very nearly deported until there was kind of a public And to right that wrong, I covered the shooting at Virginia Tech, and I was there the day after it happened. And I remember looking around and thinking, there's nothing I can do here except tell people about what it's like here. And The thing has already happened. And I looked around and thought, okay. If not this, then what? And thought back to my time covering courts, and that's how it happened just organically looking around and thinking, well, I like speaking.

Lindsay Barnes [00:03:48]:

I like talking to people. I like interviewing. I like writing. I like research. All of that Seems to square well with the law, and, ultimately, I think it was the right move for me. And, yep, glad that I did it.

Jonah Perlin [00:04:02]:

Yeah. And that story, I think, has so many lessons for people who are thinking about any career next step. Right? It's about Looking at what you're doing and really looking at what you're doing and asking, like, what are the things that I like? What are the things that I'm good at? What am I an expert in? What do I have a natural skill advantage? Like, you saw those people standing up, and you thought, yeah. I could do that. That fits me. I think it's also a great reminder for why and my the judge one of the judges for whom I clerked was big on making sure we sort of had the courts go out into Community as early as possible Mhmm. To bring people to the courts as early as possible because if people don't see it, maybe the only version of that they've seen is, like, on TV. But just having people see what lawyers can do can open up their eyes to maybe, actually, this is for me.

Jonah Perlin [00:04:51]:

And it sounds like that was a lot of what your experience was and what your path was.

Lindsay Barnes [00:04:55]:

It definitely was. I got up and sitting in the gallery of criminal trials and civil trials, it it was all Pretty riveting. And because I was only there to cover the the most interesting stuff, I wasn't there for the mundane stuff. So it all kinda lined The Status conference. Yeah. Exactly. I wasn't there for the status conference. I wasn't there for the odd discovery dispute.

Lindsay Barnes [00:05:17]:

If If you're thinking that this is the NFL, I was there for Sunday.

Jonah Perlin [00:05:20]:

Right.

Lindsay Barnes [00:05:20]:

And so I took a look at that. That seems like it could be in my wheelhouse, and then it took a little while after that To think, okay, my interests are lining up with my with what I see as my skills. I think I may have something here.

Jonah Perlin [00:05:34]:

Awesome. And talk to me a little bit about what being a journalist contributed or has contributed To your legal practice, do you think any of the skills or experiences you had have now contributed either to what you do or sorta how you do it?

Lindsay Barnes [00:05:50]:

In a lot of big ways, yes. I think there are some ways that would be obvious. I learned how to interview people doing this. I learned how to listen Professionally, I learned how to collect information, collect as many perspectives as I could about a given topic, and then learning how to take all of that information and distill it down into something that is useful to the reader, being mindful of what is Important versus what's merely interesting. When I write anything now, whether that's an email, A brief anything in a written form, I try to be mindful of okay. What's the headline here? What's the meaning of what I'm trying to get across? Like, I think of email subject line as headlines.

Jonah Perlin [00:06:47]:

Say more about that. I love that.

Lindsay Barnes [00:06:48]:

The subject line is your opportunity to tell somebody, here's what this is about. And using that space to Give the reader, who is busy, a preview of what's inside. And hopefully, it's interesting enough to get them to read on. And I think about the 1st paragraph of an email as the lead paragraph of a story. I learned AP copy, Associated Press Copy style. Where, you know, in the old days when this is a wire service, these articles were written in a format where they could be cut off at any point In the progression of paragraphs. And the the idea is you have your lead paragraph where you put all of the most important information. And with each subsequent paragraph, information of less and less importance or greater depth Maybe then you needed to get into an in the lead paragraph.

Lindsay Barnes [00:07:44]:

And that's a lot like writing emails for busy clients, busy partners, Busy executives, I don't do this with every email, but if it's if I know it's important, I will write and rewrite an email All with an eye toward if they don't read beyond the 1st paragraph here, have I given the most of what they need to know? And I'll even flag that explicitly. I said more detail below, but the gist of it is this. And they can choose to read on past that or not, but At least then, I have given them the information that I think they need efficiently and in a way that is going to be most useful to the

Jonah Perlin [00:08:25]:

reader. Yeah. I mean, we we're covering emails in my one l legal writing class right now. If you're listening to this and you can't believe that that's what's being taught in law school, welcome to new law school. It's great. It's really important.

Lindsay Barnes [00:08:35]:

Yeah. I'm

Jonah Perlin [00:08:35]:

gonna play this clip for my students because I think It is hard sometimes for new legal writers. They sort of feel like they're being repetitive, right, because they sort of, like, give the conclusion upfront. They then give the conclusion before they dive in to each sort of piece of the analysis, then they do the analysis, then they give the conclusion again, and that's so different than sort of like traditional humanities writing where you give your thesis, but there's like a payoff later. And thinking about it as the reader could Stop at any time and should be able to stop at any time. I think it's a great mental model for all legal writing, frankly, not just email writing. So that's awesome.

Lindsay Barnes [00:09:12]:

Yeah. No. I was just gonna say that I think that here's the volume that I the reference guy that can sell more often than any legal treatise. This is Strunk and White's Reader listeners can't see this. This is great podcasting. But this is Elements of Style by Strunk and White. It's like a half an inch thick. It's How to it's a style guide to, like, hey.

Lindsay Barnes [00:09:31]:

Where does the comma go here? Where does this how do I use this preposition? And I I recommend it to every group of law students that I talk to because when you start law school, you learn all this Latin. You learn a lot in the doctoral classes. You learn a lot of new ideas. You learn how to think like a lawyer. Your vocabulary is expanding, and you wanna show it off. And the best lawyers are the ones who learn how to internalize all that, know what it means, But also know how to say it in a way that is easily understandable given whatever the audience is.

Jonah Perlin [00:10:09]:

Absolutely.

Lindsay Barnes [00:10:10]:

And that's something that I think all the best lawyers do that in one form or another. And I think the earlier That law students can learn that there is legal writing, but it's really just writing. You're just trying to convey an idea using the limited tools of words. And how do you do that in a way that is clear above all, concise, and hopefully useful to the reader?

Jonah Perlin [00:10:37]:

Look. I think we could nerd out about writing for 45 minutes, for 2 hours. I'm already seeing what Episode b of the, Jonah Pearl and Lindsey Barnes experience is gonna look like. But I wanna bring us back to your story because I think it's really interesting, and I think people can learn a lot from your Story. So after graduation, you end up clerking in state court and then on federal court. And I guess I was hoping you could sort of Tell us how that all came about, what you were thinking, and how you were able to sort of line up those opportunities because I think a lot of people are interested in doing that, and everybody's path is so different.

Lindsay Barnes [00:11:10]:

Sure. When I got to law school, I wasn't a 100% sure what I wanted to do with it. I'd had the experience of watching a lot of criminal trials. I thought maybe I wanna go be a prosecutor, And then I did several internships where I decided that wasn't for me just because the mental toll that it takes and just it wasn't for me. My hat's on to people who can do it. My heart goes out to them. It's necessary. I decided it wasn't a great fit for when I want it.

Lindsay Barnes [00:11:33]:

So but I still wanted to litigate, And I had a an adjunct professor whose name is Neil Dilof. I took alternative dispute resolution from him, and He pulled me aside early and said, look. If you wanna litigate, there's no better first job you can have than going and being a a law clerk. And if you can get a federal clerkship, it's a good housekeeping seal of approval. It's a good credential to have. It'll open doors for you that others won't. That's not fair. State court clerkships are are just as valuable, if not more valuable, for reason I'll I'll get into here, As a learning experience for and preparation for practicing, but that's the advice I got, and there's some truth to it.

Lindsay Barnes [00:12:13]:

Mhmm. So I applied To something like 200 federal judges trying to to get a clerkship as a three l. And each of those applications contained a Customized cover letter for each judge

Jonah Perlin [00:12:28]:

Wow.

Lindsay Barnes [00:12:29]:

Where there was a sentence or 2 in each letter that said It was either about a case that they had presided over or a something they did before they were gone on the bench, essentially trying to address the question. Here is why I want to clerk for you specifically. And I went through that process of sending out about 200 different applications for federal clerkships. I got 2 interviews out of that effort As a 3 Wow. 1 was with a magistrate judge in Wheeling, West Virginia. The other was with a district court judge in Philadelphia. And I got to interview with this judge in Philadelphia who first question out of the box in my interview was, Hey. There's this case in your cover letter.

Lindsay Barnes [00:13:11]:

How the heck did you hear about this case?

Jonah Perlin [00:13:13]:

Wow.

Lindsay Barnes [00:13:14]:

And I just said, I was looking at clerking on this court. I was researching the judges. This one jumped out at me. He says, well, just so you know, that sentence is what got you this interview. And

Jonah Perlin [00:13:26]:

Wow.

Lindsay Barnes [00:13:26]:

I had a great conversation with this judge. I didn't get the job. And so being mindful that my odds at Getting a federal clerkship were low given the interviews I had gotten. I'd applied for state court judges as well. And being At University of Maryland, I focused a lot on the Maryland judiciary. I ended up getting a great clerkship with judge Pam White in Circuit Court for Baltimore City, probably the busiest court in the state of Maryland, certainly on the criminal docket, probably on the civil docket as well. And that was a wonderful experience. So clerking in state court, I learned early on just how busy these judges are, how many cases they've got on their docket, and that changes the approach that a judge is going to have to their work.

Lindsay Barnes [00:14:16]:

For instance, when my judge was on the civil motion's docket, we heard between, I'd say, 25 and 30 Substantive motions in civil cases a week. Wow. Over 3 days. Anywhere between 7 and 10 per day. And the judge was gonna have to rule from the bench on all of them, practically. And it was my job to prepare the judge for those hearings by reading all the briefs, Trying to distill down again, there's that question. What's this about? What's the question that they're trying to resolve here? What are the main Points that either side is making here. What are the questions that I still have looking at their arguments? Where do we need to press the parties here? And really trying to think about that and prepare my judge so that they are most efficient with their time on the bench there, given the docket that the judge had.

Lindsay Barnes [00:15:17]:

And a lot of that those judges, as much as they prepare and my judge was a stickler for preparation. A lot of it, they're flying by the seat of their pants. They're trying to Mhmm. Take their preparation and apply it to the arguments that they're hearing, and That places a greater emphasis on oral argument and understanding that you've got a limited amount of time to make your point to the judge who's trying to make up his or her mind in the midst of many other cases that they're hearing that day, that week, and really Being, again, clear and concise in the argument. Because as soon as it got into the weeds or as soon as they get into Essentially reading their brief, it was a nonstarter. Contrast that with the federal clerkship, And I did end up clerking for that judge in Philadelphia. His name's Ronald Buckwalter as you mentioned. And I applied to him In the next cycle of applications focusing on Virginia, Maryland, DC, and, well, maybe I'll apply to judge Buckwalter again.

Lindsay Barnes [00:16:22]:

I liked him well enough. He seemed to like me and just see how that goes. Having no connection to Philadelphia or that area, Just I liked him, and sure enough, that's the one that came through. In that interview, it was much shorter. The judge just told me, I just wanted to make sure it was the same person from last year. The job's yours if you want it, and that's how that came to be. So if at first you don't succeed, try try again.

Jonah Perlin [00:16:47]:

Love

Lindsay Barnes [00:16:47]:

it. And so that's how they came to pass. In that clerkship, the work I was doing for a federal judge, Very different from the work I was doing for the state trial court judge. There's a lot more time and a lighter docket on the federal court. At least it was in my experience when compared to state court. We might have heard I mentioned we heard 25 to 30 Substantive motions a week for a while there on the Baltimore City Circuit Court. We maybe did that in that was 6 months worth of work at the federal level.

Jonah Perlin [00:17:19]:

Mhmm. Sounds right.

Lindsay Barnes [00:17:20]:

And so the expectation, both for the law clerks and for the lawyers, is a much greater degree of depth in Knowing the arguments inside and out, really trying to put intense scrutiny on What the arguments are are in the briefs, trying to really be targeted in the questions that are being asked in a oral argument. Oftentimes, the judges have a much greater sense of the way they wanna rule before they go on the bench in federal court because they've had more time with the case.

Jonah Perlin [00:17:53]:

Mhmm.

Lindsay Barnes [00:17:55]:

And oftentimes, the questions in oral argument are much more narrow and much less dispositive of the case. And so that places a greater emphasis on writing and being applying that same level of clarity and conciseness to a written body, a written work. And that to me illustrated early on that if I was gonna be litigating, litigating in state court versus federal court were gonna be 2 very different Things.

Jonah Perlin [00:18:24]:

Yeah. And I had to

Lindsay Barnes [00:18:24]:

be mindful of that as I was writing and arguing before those courts.

Jonah Perlin [00:18:28]:

Yeah. I mean, that is such a Information rich answer because it talks both about the process of getting a clerkship as well as Sort of the differences between a state trial court and a federal trial court. I mean, I'd add on top of it. If you wanna think that a Federal trial court looks busy. Just go clerk on a circuit court of appeals where you might have 3 cases a month. Yeah. Right? And what I love about your answer, and and it's been my experience too even though I have not clerked on a a state trial court, is it doesn't make the task Any easier or harder depending on what level you are. It's just a different task, and it's a different writing task, a different argument task, Different genre of communication by the lawyer, different genre of communication by the judge, and I don't think we do a good enough job, frankly, in law school and even for junior lawyers who have gone through law school Sort of identifying those differences.

Jonah Perlin [00:19:22]:

I also wanna highlight the cover letter plan because for those who are still with us for a few minutes ago, I mean, Candidly, my advice to my students is often the cover letter doesn't matter. The vast majority of judges don't read them. I think your 200 cover letters may actually prove my point, but you only need 1. Right? That's the other sort of the flip side of it is you only need 1, and that can often be An opportunity to turn that 1 clerkship into a 2nd clerkship or into whatever you wanna do next. And I just love the candor with which you spoke to the judge. And if you only need 1, you got that interview. And without that interview, you don't get that 2nd interview, and you don't get that 2nd clerkship. You don't get that 2nd experience.

Jonah Perlin [00:20:04]:

I think it's amazing.

Lindsay Barnes [00:20:05]:

Thanks. Yeah. So much of this business is putting yourself out there, trying to cast a wide net when you're looking for the next thing, and really looking Far and wide, but also being very specific in your appeal to any potential employer about why you wanna work for them specifically.

Jonah Perlin [00:20:25]:

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And I think we also don't wanna forget my favorite motto now, which is state court clerkships are cool. I think we can gain so much from state court clerkships. Chips.

Lindsay Barnes [00:20:34]:

100%.

Jonah Perlin [00:20:35]:

And I dislike, at least at some law schools, the focus on it just being federal court clerkships because I think people can gain a lot from those state court experiences too, especially as you set up to build those skills and interests that let you get that next job that you were just talking about.

Lindsay Barnes [00:20:48]:

And you think about the volumes of Litigation in state court versus federal court as I was just mentioning. Like, that's most of the litigating in this country happens in state court.

Jonah Perlin [00:20:59]:

A 100%.

Lindsay Barnes [00:21:00]:

And Learning how those how state courts work, learning how they might vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and a rural court is gonna operate very currently from a busy urban court in the same state.

Jonah Perlin [00:21:14]:

Sure.

Lindsay Barnes [00:21:15]:

So I had a great education in the difference between those 2 systems early on. I would encourage anybody who's thinking of litigating to go observe local state court versus local federal court and just note the differences. Yeah.

Jonah Perlin [00:21:28]:

And if you're in law school, go to court. One of the most interesting things I've heard from my students who come from other countries is they are sometimes surprised because in their home country, court proceedings are closed. The reality is the default in the United States is that court proceedings are open and open to the public. And if you're thinking about going to law school or you're in law school and thinking about being a lawyer, go watch. They're open. You'll get a great education. I won't say it's a better education than my classroom, but it's closer than you'd think. So yeah.

Jonah Perlin [00:21:57]:

So let's fast forward a little bit to your time as a litigator. So you finish your clerkships And you sort of go into the the big law junior associate world. Talk to me a little bit about why you made that decision, but also sort of the kinds of things you were staying in those positions.

Lindsay Barnes [00:22:12]:

Coming out of the federal clerkship, I was interested in litigating. I wanted to be a civil litigator, Again, based on my experience having worked in prosecutors' offices, and it was a product of reaching out to as many people in my network as I could About the people who do that, and sometimes that was people I already knew. Sometimes it was people who went to my law school. Sometimes it was people who went to my undergraduate college. Anybody who had a career that looked like something I might wanna do, I was reaching out to them as a as a law clerk trying to figure out what the next step was. And when I worked at DLA Piper, That was a product of somebody who knew somebody who also knew somebody who was looking for somebody. Right. So, again, there's that casting a wide net.

Lindsay Barnes [00:23:00]:

I mentioned my professor, Neil Dilof. He was a litigator at DLA Piper for many years. A he put me in touch with Somebody at DLA who he had helped mentor, I met with her. She said, well, we like you. We like what you bring to the table. We're not looking for somebody just yet, But there's a partner in the Northern Virginia office of North of DLA Piper who is looking for somebody. I'll pass your resume onto them and see if they wanna reach out to you. And so that's how The big law path came to be was of the nets that I had cast, that was the one that had worked out.

Jonah Perlin [00:23:33]:

Right. And you have to cast multiple I think I may be mixing my fishing metaphors. But regardless, you have to put out a lot in the world, and, again, you only need 1.

Lindsay Barnes [00:23:42]:

That's right. And I had a great experience at DLA Piper That started with working for this particular partner who was concentrated in the defense contractor Business representing those clients either in investigations with the government or commercial disputes that they got into with their partners. That was really fascinating work. I liked it a lot. I liked the learning the whole world of government contracting and military contracting. I thought that was all really cool. I had the opportunity to follow that partner to another firm. I chose to stick at DLA because my first child had just been born at that point, and I figured a career change on top of my 1st child

Jonah Perlin [00:24:25]:

Family life change.

Lindsay Barnes [00:24:26]:

Yeah. Yeah. It was gonna be too much to take on at one time, And I stuck at DLA Piper. I had a much broader experience as a result of that decision where I was Helping to litigate and investigate everything from accountants who were being who had enforcement actions from The SEC to international treaty arbitration to I had a pro bono matter where I got to represent a Somali man who was the victim of torture at the hands of the Somali National Army back in the civil war that they had in that country. And all of that experience was really valuable. I got to learn a ton about litigating while learning a little about a lot of different areas. And that gave me the confidence to know that, okay, I have these core skills as a lawyer and as a litigator, and the subject matter can change. And I can learn a new area of law, but still apply The interviewing, the arguments, the writing, the research skills that I've developed across my other cases.

Lindsay Barnes [00:25:37]:

And I think it it gave me some solid footing to know that there's more than 1 kind of litigation, and there's more than 1 kind of way to, To be a lawyer, as we've talked about on this show many times. So that led me to think more about Specializing again, and I liked my early work where I got to know the same clients and the same folks on the client side and work for the same partners on a fairly regular basis. So that led to the opportunity at Cadwalader where, of all things, I joined a very small litigation group that represented Beer brewers exclusively. That was the work I did at Cadwalader where we represented beer brewers usually in their Commercial disputes with wholesalers. Sometimes, there was a government facing part of that where it's a highly regulated industry, and it's mostly happening at the state level. Sure. So I learned about how state attorneys general work, what they're concerned about. I learned a little bit about state legislative processes, And that got me thinking more about because I got to know the client side legal team well, the in house legal team well, But also their sales folks, their ops folks, their lobbyists.

Lindsay Barnes [00:26:52]:

And I started Thinking more about being a problem solver and being and that being something I like to do more than Being a blunt force object as a litigator.

Jonah Perlin [00:27:06]:

Right.

Lindsay Barnes [00:27:06]:

And oftentimes, as you know, the end of litigation is only very rarely satisfying To either party, including the party that wins. Sure. And I similar to my work as a journalist, There were a ton of cases I did where I thought, gosh. If this conversation had just happened 3 years ago, this whole mess could have been avoided. Or if they had just fixed this one part of the agreement, then business relationship could have continued on fruitfully. So That got me thinking about in house work and, ultimately, what led me to Capital One.

Jonah Perlin [00:27:41]:

Wow. What a great little path. And I didn't even know all the nooks and crannies of it, so I'm so glad you shared it. One of the things that I'd love for you to say a little bit more about frankly is It sounds like your career sort of had 2 always changing variables. 1 was sort of expertise in a subject area, and one was an expertise in skill acquisition or additional skill acquisition as a litigator. And I'd love to hear Sort of now that you're a little bit removed from those experiences, how you think about those 2 factors in sort of the 1st 10 years of a lawyer's career?

Lindsay Barnes [00:28:16]:

I see the skill building part of it as being more of a steady, upward trajectory. So you think about Discovery, brief writing, research, those are things that you're learning early on in your time as a lawyer. Or and, you know, and there are analogs in other practice areas as well. I just know litigation because it's what I did. Sure. And Thinking about that as, okay, I need to learn how to do these things, then I need to learn how to get better at doing those things. And in the world of private practice, I need to get better at being efficient about these things because the more senior you get, The higher your hourly rate goes, the more that is going to be expected of you to do in less time. Mhmm.

Lindsay Barnes [00:29:09]:

So thinking about that on the skill side as more of a steady learning curve, I would say. On the expertise side of it, I think getting comfortable with Changing subject matters is a good thing. If you know that you're really passionate about a particular area of the law, more power to you. Pursue that. Really, really go for that. But if you're somebody who's coming out of law school going, I've had a couple of cool experiences. I have a general idea of This is what I wanna do. Then think about the kind of law that you wanna practice in terms of litigation versus transactional versus other forms of practice that there are, and I would be less concerned with what the underlying subject matter is because that can change, because clients come and go, because you wanna be in the best position to be flexible about where you're working, and the kind of work that you're doing.

Lindsay Barnes [00:30:16]:

So being open to taking on things as they come to you In terms of subject matter, I think is a healthy thing.

Jonah Perlin [00:30:23]:

And talk to me a little bit about the transition from being a litigator to going in house. You know, we'll talk about what you actually do in house in a minute. But before we go there, I wanna talk about sort of getting that next job because something that I candidly experienced when I was thinking, hey. I'm not sure I wanna be a big law litigator for the rest of my life. And you get you hit that moment where you've been doing it for so long, and you sort of look in the mirror and you say, I know I wanna do something else. I sort of like what I'm doing, but I think I could like other things more. One of the things that I think a lot of Litigators think is, oh, maybe I'll go in house. I personally felt there was a little bit of a a challenge to that because a lot of in house Places want more transactional experience and less litigating experience.

Jonah Perlin [00:31:05]:

And I guess I'm curious how you think about that transition from being a 5 to 10 year litigator to trying to find an in house shop?

Lindsay Barnes [00:31:13]:

Sure. I think there were a few things that I thought a lot about and talked about in that interviewing process and in that transition process as skills that I had built up that were going to be useful for in house. As a litigator, you are Usually, at the end of something. You have come in when things have fallen apart and the parties are no longer working together. And with that backward lens, you get used to seeing where things go wrong, and you develop a lens through which to analyze that. And so you become good at issue spotting. And that issue spotting ability is applicable to in house work in as far as where you're at the beginning of something oftentimes Mhmm. Where Your client is telling you, hey.

Lindsay Barnes [00:32:06]:

We're thinking about doing x y z. What do you think? When I get those kind of questions, I'm thinking about all the cases I've litigated up to that point and not so much from a substantive subject matter point of view, but mostly just from, Like, how do companies relate to each other, and how can that go awry?

Jonah Perlin [00:32:26]:

Mhmm.

Lindsay Barnes [00:32:26]:

That's a really valuable skill to have as a litigator coming into in house. I'd also say that communication is a big premium for in house lawyers. Learning how to reach Lay audiences versus legal audiences, understanding that that's gonna be different depending on who the audience is. Mhmm. Learning how to tell stories, Learning how to convey the most information in the most efficient way possible for busy clients, That's gonna be true in any in house work. And, also, having a sense of how does this read. Like, we in litigation, we're often in a position of how is the whole thing that I'm saying here coming across to the other side.

Jonah Perlin [00:33:12]:

Right.

Lindsay Barnes [00:33:12]:

And In doing that work, that's great training for thinking about how to communicate complex ideas simply. And the higher up in the chain of people that you're talking to, the simpler it's gotta be because the less The time that they have to read and listen to you.

Jonah Perlin [00:33:35]:

It's something that I like to say for my you know, some of my strongest students who I'm writing recommendations for is that The best students are the ones who can do things, who can convey information simply, but not simplistically. And, like, that's the key difference is simple doesn't mean Not well thought out, not well analyzed, quite the opposite. In order for something to be simple, you have to really understand all the pieces, skills, and the industries. And I mean, you had a lot of practice learning brand new industries, which I also think is probably appealing to someone going in house is the ability to sort of really learn a whole industry, and all the things that matter.

Lindsay Barnes [00:34:10]:

A 100%. That's one of the things I really appreciate about in house work is The ability to go deep when that's called for, but oftentimes, it's much broader and knowing the level of depth that you need to get into, not just in terms of your own knowledge, but in terms of the communication. And, again, it's the old Mark Twain thing of, sorry. I wrote such a long letter. I didn't have time to write you Short one.

Jonah Perlin [00:34:34]:

Totally.

Lindsay Barnes [00:34:35]:

That's I think about that all the time in my work and thinking how these people I work for are busy. How do I get them To understand the very small thing that I'm trying to convey to them.

Jonah Perlin [00:34:48]:

Yeah. And it sounds like, you've been doing that since you came out of school as a journalist, And, you're still doing that today. Talk to me about what it's like to be an in house lawyer. I think, you know, I I've talked to a couple on the podcast, but each company's a little different. Each In house role is a little different. What would I see you doing if I sort of followed you around for a day or a week or a month? What kind of tasks? What kind of communication are you doing, who you're working with. What's that like?

Lindsay Barnes [00:35:12]:

It's a lot of meetings as I've learned early on. I'd say over the course of my 8 hour day, 6 of that 6 to 7 of that is meetings.

Jonah Perlin [00:35:23]:

Wow.

Lindsay Barnes [00:35:24]:

In half hour to hour chunks of time where the subject matter is changing. The audience is changing. Sometimes it's internal To Capital One, sometimes it's with our partners, and understanding and getting comfortable with jumping from thing to thing and being prepared for that is a lot of the work of this job. And I got concerned early on, and it's a common thing among in house lawyers where there are so many meetings over the course of the day. Like, when am I gonna have time to get my work done?

Jonah Perlin [00:35:57]:

Right. I was gonna ask that. Yeah.

Lindsay Barnes [00:35:59]:

And what you learn early on is that the meetings are often the work. Like, lawyers and client side folks are coming to you with, hey. What do you think of this? And Sometimes it's something that you've had a chance to prepare for. Sometimes it's not. And understanding what the limits of your knowledge are, Understanding who else needs to be brought into that conversation, that's the analysis that I'm doing in those meetings. It's not so much, well, Section 5 rule 3 says this. It's not that. It's instinctively, I think this.

Lindsay Barnes [00:36:33]:

It's based on my knowledge of x, y, z, But there are other stakeholders that we ought to bring into this. There are subject matter experts who know this area better than I do. Sometimes it's outside counsel that you're going to in that role, or it's just knowing your client's business well enough to know, Hey. If you're thinking of doing this, we need to bring in compliance. We need to bring in the risk department. We need to bring in people from this other side of the business who are trying to do something related, and left hand and right hand need to talk to each other here. That's not legal analysis so much, but it is Analysis, and it's the ability to see the whole playing field and understand where you and where the conversation you're having fit into it. In terms of written work product, I mentioned the emails before.

Lindsay Barnes [00:37:25]:

It's a lot of emails. I write and read a lot more emails than I was used sue in in private practice. It means that you have a lot greater breadth and less depth than I was used to in private practice.

Jonah Perlin [00:37:38]:

Sure.

Lindsay Barnes [00:37:38]:

And I do a lot more PowerPoint decks than I used to. I did some in my litigation time for Client presentations and for in court proceedings on a handful of occasions, but PowerPoint is really The main medium of written communication outside of email in an in house format, at least that's what I found. And so learning how to communicate more visually, learning how to put only the most important information on a slide, Learning how to talk over a PowerPoint deck is something I had to learn how to do, and I'm still learning it, where if you're just reciting what's on the slide, you're gonna lose your audience.

Jonah Perlin [00:38:18]:

Right.

Lindsay Barnes [00:38:19]:

Because they can read too. And knowing the things that you wanna say about what's on the screen, Knowing the meaning of what you're getting at and how to communicate that in a way that complements the visual storytelling you're doing through the deck is a real in house specific skill. And for somebody who's learning and thinking of going in house eventually, That's a really good skill to focus on and build when you have the opportunity.

Jonah Perlin [00:38:48]:

Well and if somebody's written an academic article On how lawyers should write and create PowerPoints, I appreciate the shout out to this as like the genre that lawyers, especially in house, Are gonna be communicating in just for a purely selfish level. Before we dive, Warren, I'd love to ask a follow-up on that last point about PowerPoint, which is What would you say to somebody who's used to writing briefs and memos to what they have to change, not in the content, but in the presentation of that information when it's being done in this more visual medium, whether or not you're gonna be speaking over those, slides or not?

Lindsay Barnes [00:39:25]:

Sure. I go back to My days as a law clerk where reading briefs, it always made my life easier and the judge's life easier when I could read only the headers of a brief and understand what the argument was. And I could go to the rest of the brief and understand The details behind that argument. But if I could read those headings and they're complete sentences And I could understand what the point was. That party was already sitting on 1st base in terms of getting to where they wanted the court to go. Mhmm. I think that translates to PowerPoint in that what you are used to seeing in subject matter headings are oftentimes bullet points on a PowerPoint slide. Mhmm.

Lindsay Barnes [00:40:14]:

And what you say in complement to that PowerPoint deck is often like the body of the brief. Right. But in terms of a visual presentation, what you wanna give Your audience is only the information that they need to know. They're really only guideposts to what you're talking about, and learning how to, again, say more with less and use plain English as much as you can and breaking up slides where they become too cluttered because at a certain point, the best slides are the ones that have Just a handful of bullet points on it. Mhmm. And maybe some kind of visual representation when that's appropriate. Flow charts are really useful for that, for example.

Jonah Perlin [00:41:01]:

Right.

Lindsay Barnes [00:41:02]:

But that's it. And if you find that a given slide in a PowerPoint deck is getting cluttered, break it up Right. Or figure out where you can cut Or figure out can I say this in fewer words? And if you do that, your audience will be so much more primed to be receptive to your message as opposed to somebody who has a very dense slide and they're reading from it.